Have you ever had a teacher say, “That sentence starts one way and ends another”? If you have, don’t feel bad. Others make this same mistake all the time. Sometimes, we simply lose our train of thought when we write, and we literally start a sentence in one place and end up in another, as illustrated in the following example:
It’s tough to make sense of this sentence, right? Here is a better version:
Of course, this is not the only faulty sentence structure error you might make. It’s important to pay close attention to your sentence structure to make sure you have both a subject and a verb. And, if you are listing items or phrases in a sentence, make sure you keep the items in your list in the same form. Doing so keeps your sentences “parallel,” which is a good thing.
Here is an example of a sentence without parallel structure:
In the sentence above, breakfast is a noun, whereas exercising and checking begin verb phrases. The items in the list are not in the same form. Here is a correction where the items listed are in the same form: